The meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains last week is the biggest space rock to have hit earth in more than a century, scientists have claimed.

The 100,000 tonne rock, measuring around 55 feet in diameter, created a huge hole in a frozen lake when it crashed into the ground.

Scientists have found more than 50 tiny fragments of the meteor, allowing them to uncover information about its contents.

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Experts said the meteor that left a 50-foot hole in a frozen lake on the outskirts of Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, weighed around 100,000 tonnes and measured 55 feet in diameter

Viktor Grokhovsky, who led the expedition from Urals Federal University in February following the crash, said that 53 fragments of the meteor have been plucked from the ice-covered Chebarkul Lake

Rock of proof: On Saturday, divers searched the waters beneath the ice for traces of space rock but surfaced empty handed, leaving some experts questioning whether the hole was indeed formed by a piece of falling debris

Local residents have been
more interested in the black market value of the fragments since the dramatic incident, as a 'gold
mine' has been kickstarted fior the valuable pieces.

As they search for their own pieces of
the meteor, rocks have already been put on the internet for sale, and police
are warning all purchasers to prepare for possible fraud.

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The meteor injured nearly 1,500
people and caused widespread property damage in Chelyabinsk city on
Friday, with health officials saying that 46 of the injured remain
hospitalised.

The debris narrowly missed a direct
and devastating hit on the industrial city which has a population of
1.13 million but spread panic through its streets as the sky above lit
up with a blinding flash.

Service pieces of a meteorite are displayed in a laboratory in Yekaterinburg after being recovered from near Lake Cherbarkul in the Chelyabinsk region. A total of 53 pieces have been brought for analysis to the university in Yekaterinburg

Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office said: 'We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years.'

He told the Wall Street Journal:
'When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number
of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably
some large ones.'

Viktor Grokhovsky, who led the
expedition from Urals Federal University, said that 53 fragments of the
meteor have been plucked from the ice-covered Chebarkul Lake.

He said they are less than a
centimeter (half an inch) in size, about 10 per cent iron, and belong to
the chondrite type, the most common variation of meteorites found on
Earth.

Divers inspecting the lake have found
nothing at the bottom, but Mr Grokhovsky said a fragment as large as
50-60 centimeters (20-24 inches) could eventually be found there.

Worth up to £6,500: These tiny fragments are said to be valuable and some are already being auctioned online after they were found near Lake Cherbarkul in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia

Terrifying: Almost 1,200 people were injured when the meteor burst through the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 46,000 mph

Workers in the city remained busy
replacing acres of windows shattered by a powerful shockwave caused by
the meteor's strike, which NASA said released 500 kilotons of energy,
the power equivalent to more than 30 Hiroshima bombs.

The local governor estimated the
damage at 1 billion rubles (£21.5million) and said he hopes the federal
government will provide at least half that amount.

Lidiya Rykhlova, head of the
astronomy department at the Moscow-based Institute for Space Research,
said experts have drafted a program that envisages building powerful
telescopes, including space-based ones, to warn against potentially
dangerous asteroids, comets and other threats.

Fragments have started to appear on
Avito.Ru, a Russian website for classified ads. Many pieces were
harvested around Chelyabinsk, where more than 1,000 were injured as the
meteor disintegrated overhead.

Friction: Burning from the friction with Earth's thin air, the space rock exploded 14.5 miles above the Russian town of Chelyabinsk

One user asked for around £6,500 for a
small piece, while another offered 18 pieces for £11 each. Residents of
a village near Chelyabinsk searched the snowy streets, collecting
stones they hoped would prove to be the real thing.

But
not all were ready to sell. 'I will keep it. Why sell it? I didn't have
a rich lifestyle before, so why start now?' a woman in a pink woollen
hat and winter jacket, clutching a small black pebble, told state television Rossiya-24.

On Saturday, divers searched the
waters beneath the ice for traces of space rock but surfaced empty
handed, leaving some experts questioning whether the hole was indeed
formed by a piece of falling debris.

Wake-up call: Experts said asteroid 2012 DA14 should drive nations to work together to create a warning system

Destruction: Officials later said that if an early warning system had been in place, Russia would have been able to prepare for the destruction caused by asteroid debris

As it raced through the sky, the
50-foot wide chunk of space rock compressed the air ahead of it,
creating the enormous temperatures that meant it exploded in a fireball
somewhere between 18 and 32 miles above the ground at around 9.20am
local time on Friday.

Although
some debris fell to earth, ‘whipping up a pillar of ice, water and
steam’ and creating a 20-foot-wide crater, the damage in nearby towns
was actually caused by shockwaves created by the meteor breaking the sound barrier and then exploding.

Collectors
from around the world will be keen to get hold of a piece. Film
director Steven Spielberg is a noted collector. In October a 9in piece
of the Seymchan meteorite found in Siberia in 1960 sold in New York for
$43,750 (£28,200).

Astronomers have also revealed that the meteor could have hit UK cities if it had hit at a slightly different time of day.

Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow and close to the Kazakhstan border, took the brunt of the impact

Local residents said they witnessed burning objects in the sky of the Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions

VIDEO Fragments of meteor that smashed into Russia on Friday have been found